


Risky Business

by ORiley42



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Benji is the most adorable dork, Ethan is incapable of not being an enigmatic bastard, Feelings, Fluff and Humor, Love Confessions, M/M, vague spoilers for Fallout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 01:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15546249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ORiley42/pseuds/ORiley42
Summary: “I could have been an assassin,” Ethan insisted, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him. He turned the deadbolt and put the chain on, for good measure.“Eh,” Benji waved a hand as if to dismiss the thought, “If there’d really been an assassin, I’m sure you’d have been one step behind him, ready to save my hide, as usual.”“Maybe,” Ethan allowed, finally cracking a hint of a smile, “but it would give me a little peace of mind if you followed even the most basic security protocols.”Benji shuffled a pile of takeout containers and empty chip bags off the coffee table and into the garbage, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll start following them when you do, Mr. I’ve Never Met a Cliff I Didn’t Want To Jump Off Of.”





	Risky Business

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Risky Business](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16327490) by [Fiona0707](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiona0707/pseuds/Fiona0707)



> Rewatched Rogue Nation and then saw Fallout, am now immersed in FEELINGS and had to scratch this fic out or be doomed to have it haunt me forever….  
> I hope you enjoy this plotless little bit of hopefully funny, not-so-unrequited-love & fluff! <3

“Dammit,” Benji swore, tossing his controller down as his avatar stood victorious over a slain dragon. He’d hoped the new game would give him more than a few hours of entertainment, but it just seemed simple and empty after the events of the past few weeks.

Now he was at loose ends once again, stuck on mandatory leave following the whole almost-apocalypse business in Kashmir, with no contact from his team except a postcard from Luther, who was enjoying a vacation somewhere warm and sandy. Benji traveled enough with his job, thank you very much, and so had no desire to take such a trip. He also wasn’t much for hobbies that weren’t hooked up to a screen, which all added up to him sitting grumpily in his apartment with nothing to do on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Like fate answering his call, a firm knock sounded at his door.

He bounced up from the couch and flung it open.

“Ethan!” he cried, thrilled to find his friend on the other side.

Ethan frowned. “Did you even bother to check the peephole?”

Benji sighed. “It’s good to see you, too.”

“I could have been an assassin,” Ethan insisted, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him. He turned the deadbolt and put the chain on, for good measure.

“Eh,” Benji waved a hand as if to dismiss the thought, “If there’d really been an assassin, I’m sure you’d have been one step behind him, ready to save my hide, as usual.”

“Maybe,” Ethan allowed, finally cracking a hint of a smile, “but it would give me a little peace of mind if you followed even the most basic security protocols.”

Benji shuffled a pile of takeout containers and empty chip bags off the coffee table and into the garbage, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll start following them when you do, Mr. I’ve Never Met a Cliff I Didn’t Want To Jump Off Of.”

Ethan laughed, low but genuine, and Benji felt an answering ache in his heart. God, he’d missed that sound.

He turned around after his brief tidy, taking in how much better Ethan looked now than when he’d been shipped into an American hospital, looking like a man does after crashing a helicopter and getting half-beaten to death by a madman.

The cuts and bruises were all but faded now, and his movements had recovered their usual easy grace.

“All healed up?” Benji asked.

“As much as I need to be,” was Ethan’s elusive reply.

“I’ll take that as a _no_ , then. Sit down, before you bust your stitches or something.”

“Actually,” Ethan gripped Benji by the shoulders, turning him around until they were eye to eye, “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about. Something important.”

“Uh…” Benji always found it a little hard to think or speak in close proximity to Ethan, and the fact that he was still holding him fast wasn’t helping.

Ethan pressed on, asking seriously, “Do you know how I feel about you, Benji?”

“Well...pretty fond, right? Generally positive?” Benji guessed, anxiety blooming in his chest. “At least cordial, I mean, I thought we were pretty solidly in friend territory, but the look you’re giving me makes me wonder if I’ve been deluded for the better part of seven years, and _oh my god_ if you’re here to tell me that we’re not even friends after everything that—"

Ethan kissed him. His lips captured Benji’s next words at the source, pressing gently for one, two, three heartbeats, before pulling cautiously away.

“That’s how I feel about you,” Ethan clarified in a murmur.

“Oh.” Benji blinked. “Are you…is this…is this like, a test?”

Ethan squinted. “Uh, no.”

“Some sort of…covert op?”

“Definitely not.”

“Oh, right,” Benji scoffed, brain buzzing in confused circles, “So, you just waltzed into my apartment and kissed me for no good reason?”

“Is having feelings for you and wanting to kiss you not a good enough reason?”

“I…” Benji understood then, on a visceral level, what his computer felt like when it crashed. The sensation was a little like being lit on fire and dunked in ice at the same time.

“You…” Benji poked Ethan in the chest, “have feelings…for _me_.” He pointed fervently at his own face.

“Yes,” Ethan confirmed patiently.

“Well, that’s…but..” Benji sputtered, “How long’s this feelings business been going on?”

Ethan tilted his head, considering. “It didn’t really click until I saw you looking down at me, after my heart stopped beating in Casablanca.”

“That’s fitting,” Benji mused, thinking idly of Bogart and Bergman. Then, “Wait a minute, that was Morocco, that was _years_ ago!”

Ethan did not disagree. “It took me a while to figure things out. It wasn’t until you followed me into a possible nuclear blast zone that I realized keeping you at arm’s length wasn’t keeping you safe.”

“So, you just let me pine away, all that time?”

Ethan’s eyes lit up. “You were pining?”

“Shut up, no I wasn’t.” Benji crossed his arms, “I was completely cool and removed and not crying into a tub of rocky road, if that’s what you were thinking.”

“I wasn’t, but I am now.”

Benji glared at Ethan with all the ire he could muster, which honestly, wasn’t that much. “I know that physically, I wouldn’t stand a chance at trying to kill you, but _spiritually_ , I’ve murdered you several times over by now.”

“Well, then you’d have really wasted all that time pining over me.”

Benji scrubbed a hand over his face, “I’m never living that down, am I. God, you _bastard_ ,” Benji made as if to shove Ethan, but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. “You play your cards pretty damn close to your chest.”

“Is that news to you?”

“I suppose not,” Benji rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a good old-fashioned panic begin to claw its way up his spine. “Also, sidebar,” he began to babble, “I feel like there’s a pun lurking somewhere in this conversation that I’m missing, and it’s like an itch I can’t scratch, but nothing’s coming to mind—”

Ethan kissed him again, this time sliding his hands around Benji’s waist and swaying in close, until they were pressed chest to chest.

“Oh boy…” Benji breathed when they broke for air. “Would you look at that, you’ve finally found a way to shut me up.”

“I don’t want to shut you up,” Ethan countered, “Your voice is one of the best things in the world. ‘Ethan, you’re clear. Ethan, we’ve got the asset. Ethan, Luther’s trying to order a pizza without pineapple, I need you to come back and physically stop him from doing so.’”

“That happened once!”

“I was in a knife fight on a dirigible at the time!”

“…Fine, I’ll admit that on that one lone occasion, I was slightly ridiculous.”

“You are very ridiculous, on many occasions, and it’s one of the things I like most about you.”

“You…you can’t just say things like that,” Benji breathed, hoping his knees felt weak because of some terrible undiagnosed health condition, not on account of Ethan’s heart-breakingly soft smile.

“But what about Julia?” Benji heard himself asking. He immediately wanted to conk himself on the head with something heavy, because why was he messing up this moment by bringing up the man of his dream’s _ex-wife_?

But Ethan didn’t even flinch. “You may have noticed that she’s married. To someone else.”

“Right, yeah. Sorry.”

Ethan shrugged, seeming to say with his shoulders ‘it hurts, but in the end I’m genuinely happy that she’s found peace and love in her new life.’ Or, at least, that’s what Benji assumed it meant—it could have been Ethan’s way of saying ‘I despise modern art and also avocados are overrated’ for all that Benji apparently knew about his friend.

“And…Ilsa?” Benji prompted carefully.

“What about her?”

“Let’s see…shall we start with the movie star smile, or go directly to the flawless musculature and curves in all the right places?”

Ethan pursed his lips before replying, “What I’m hearing is: you want me to set you up with Ilsa.”

Benji thwacked Ethan’s bicep in retribution, “Don’t be dense, you know what I’m getting at.”

“I do, but it’s more fun to tease you.”

“Alright,” Benji huffed, “I’ll ask more clearly: do you or do you not have a deep, secret-agent-badass-hottie peas in a pod love connection with our enigmatic British ally?”

“Are you implying that we’re both hot, and therefore, _I’m_ hot?”

“Of course, you’re hot!” Benji threw his hands up in the air, “For the love of god, could you stop fishing for compliments and put me out of my misery.”

“Benji,” Ethan said calmingly, taking a step forward and tracing his hands down Benji’s arms, bringing them back to his sides, “You’re putting _yourself_ in this misery. Because there’s nothing between me and Ilsa. I care about her, of course, but there’s no future there. And honestly, I wouldn’t want one—she’s not the person who’s been by my side for years, backing me up at every turn. She hasn’t stuck with me through the good and the bad and the boring and the downright crazy. She hasn’t been my rock in the storm, the person I come home to at the end of every mission. The person who keeps me going, and pushes me when I need pushing, and fights for me when I need it most.”

Benji chewed the inside of his cheek in a futile attempt to keep his raw emotions from spilling all over his face. “That’s, er, that’s…quite a thing, you said there,” he said weakly.

Ethan smiled, the kind that softened his eyes and took years off his face. “Benji, I don’t want you to think that you’re somehow… _after_ Julia or Ilsa. Some sort of third place, consolation prize, because that’s not how it works…” Ethan took Benji’s hand and placed it over his heart, “not here.”

Benji sniffed. “You’re being so corny,” he said, as if he wasn’t tearing up at the proclamation, “If only the bad guys could see you now, they’d never be afraid of you again.”

“So, it’s time for you to put me out of _my_ misery, one way or another,” Ethan pressed past Benji’s attempt at deflection.

“Hmm?”

“Let me know if you want what I want. If you want to give this, _us_ , a try.”

“Do I—?” Benji trailed off incredulously, before hauling Ethan in by the neck for a crushing kiss.

“Of _course,_ I want that, you absolute _lummox_ ,” he whispered harshly against Ethan’s mouth, “As if there was ever a doubt about that.”

“Okay,” Ethan whispered back, before dragging him back down into a raw, passionate embrace that had Benji seeing stars.

Because _naturally_ Ethan kissed like he’d been plucked straight from the pages of a really filthy romance novel, or possibly Benji’s dirtier dreams.

“Better than fiction, ha,” Benji muttered vaguely as he gasped for air.

“What’s that?”

“Never mind,” Benji shook his head, wondering if he’d ever stop saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or it was a permanent genetic failing of his, “lost in translation between my brain and my mouth.”

Ethan looked at him like he was just the most charming little thing on the face of the Earth, instead of a moderately clumsy tech geek with no verbal filter.

“Quickly, before you kiss me again and I lose all meaningful brain function,” Benji said in a rush, “can we agree to be honest with each other going forward? About this emotional stuff I mean, not work things, I totally get it if you have to lie through your teeth about some undercover mission to infiltrate the Australian parliament or whatever and oh god, you really should kiss me now or I may never stop rambling –”

Ethan obliged, gently cutting Benji off and giving him something much better to do with his tongue.

“And yes,” Ethan said once Benji’s runaway mouth had been sufficiently corralled, “I can agree to be honest on the topic of our relationship.”

Relationship! Benji thought giddily, has such a mundane word ever sounded so sweet? He clashed their mouths together again, not willing to part with Ethan for the world, much less something so trivial as breathing.

“Don’t faint on me now,” Ethan smirked when Benji’s traitorous knees quaked beneath him, the lack of oxygen taking its toll.

“Not all of us can hold our breath for six minutes. Though,” Benji’s pout turned into a grin, “you do make a compelling case for practicing.”

“There’s that pun you were looking for. Or is that just a double-entendre?” Ethan wondered.

“I have no idea. But I think I might love you.” Benji froze as soon as the words left his mouth. Perhaps, if he stood very still, Ethan wouldn’t be able to see him, and he and his ill-timed confession could just sink unnoticed into the carpet.

Alas, evolution had not granted him this gift of extreme camouflage, as Ethan was definitely staring right at him. He lifted a hand from Benji’s waist to cup his cheek, not letting him avoid his gaze.

“Did I ever tell you exactly what those feelings I had were? The ones I came here to tell you about?”

“I think I got the gist. But, in the interest of specificity…” Benji trailed off hopefully.

“It’s love,” Ethan said simply. “I love you.”

“Huh,” Benji sat back on his heels, eyes wide. “Kind of thought that’d be harder for you to say. But that was stupid of me,” he realized, hands latching onto Ethan’s jacket to keep him close, “Because I’ve never met someone who loved more, or more fiercely, than you. So…I’d like to amend my previous statement.”

Ethan looked worried, and it broke Benji’s heart to see that he of all people had put that expression on his face, and so he hurried to clarify: “I definitely do love you.”

“Oh.” It was Ethan’s turn to be speechless. It didn’t last long, however, because he was far more adept than Benji at translating his wordless emotions into physical acts— _very_ physical acts.

A minute later found the pair of them crashing onto the couch, Ethan’s weight pinning Benji into the worn green cushions.

The couch groaned ominously under their combined weight, and Ethan pulled back enough to frown at it.

“Oh, yeah, ol’ Bessie here’s not the sturdiest of furniture,” Benji slapped the side of the couch like it was a loyal horse, “But, she does her best.”

Amusement twinkled in Ethan’s eyes, along with something a little more intense. “Then, should we give the old girl a break? Take this somewhere else?”

“…Oh,” Benji cottoned on after a few drawn out moments and a significant eyebrow raise from Ethan, “Yes, let’s do that.”

He scrambled out from under Ethan, “I’m going to go and remove about a week’s worth of dirty laundry from my bed, and probably change the sheets too, while I’m at it, and after I’ve made the place habitable you can follow—” Benji turned around to see if Ethan was listening, and instead found Ethan about three inches behind him.

“I’ve seen a lot worse than your dirty laundry,” Ethan pointed out, fingers slipping up and under Benji’s shirt as he pressed up against his back.

“I’m not sure you have,” Benji admitted, breath catching as Ethan’s hands wandered.

“I’ll take my chances,” Ethan said in between nipping at Benji’s earlobe.

“My risk-taker,” Benji said fondly as Ethan followed him over the threshold, “You know…that’s one of the things I love about you the most. When it isn’t driving me out of my bloody mind.”

“Then I promise to be here, taking risks and driving you out of your mind, for a very long time.”

Ethan pulled his shirt over his head in one fluid motion, leading Benji to believe he was most definitely not referring to the risks of their workplace.

Benji scrambled to follow suit, grinning and shooting back, “I think I can live with that.”

**Author's Note:**

> lemme know in the comments if you are also suffering from Emotions™ about these two!!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Risky Business [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17946917) by [ORiley42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ORiley42/pseuds/ORiley42)




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